Nabra Hassanen died a brutal death and we cannot look away. On the night of June 18th, Nabra Hassanen was abducted near the mosque where she participated in midnight prayer for Ramadan. She was beaten to death and her body was dumped in a nearby pond. She was only 17 years old. Our hearts are with her family as they mourn the loss of their daughter and with the friends of Nabra who were also chased by her murderer and unable to save their friend. We are sickened by this act of hatred and violence and grieve with her family and community members.

Nabra was murdered during Ramadan, the holiest time of the year for Muslim Americans, and her parents believe that she was targeted for wearing a hijab and abaya - a traditional cloak worn by Muslim women. “He killed her because she’s a Muslim — this is what I tell the detective,” Nabra’s father stated. Despite the concerns of Nabra’s parents it only took the police a matter of hours to determine that Nabra’s murder was an act of “road rage” and not a hate crime. We are disturbed by the inference that these terms are mutually exclusive, and haunted by the reminder that authorities similarly found that a “parking dispute” drove the murder of three Muslim American college students in Chapel Hill in February of 2015. Considering the rise of racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia emboldened by the Trump Administration, the swift dismissal of hatred for Muslims as a motive seems premature and counterintuitive.

Nabra’s death, as well as the violent harassment of two Muslim women in Portland (which resulted in the murder of the two men who came to their aid), only reinforces the fact that the rise of hate in the nation places women and girls of color in perpetual danger. America’s long history with vigilante violence includes vicious assaults against women as well as men, but this reality is sometimes overlooked in discussions of hate crimes. For example, a young Black woman was verbally assaulted, pushed and shoved at a Trump rally in Louisville, KY as Trump supporters yelled both racial and gendered slurs, but there is no indication that the attack is being assessed as a hate crime. Muslim American women have reported attackers attempting to rip off their hijabs, Latinx women report being taunted about their immigration status and the ‘wall.’ More dramatically, Deborah Pearl, a Black woman in Cleveland, was killed after a white man ran a red light, hit her car, and then got out and shot her four times with a rifle. This shocking homicide has undeniable racial overtones, yet in contrast to other high profile cases, it has garnered little to no attention. These cases suggest that there is a category of hate crimes that is not currently well understood nor directly targeted in reporting or data gathering.

The Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies calls these “intersectional hate crimes:” violence against populations who are subject to two or more vulnerabilities. The challenge here is that crimes against these populations are not typically recorded as hate crimes, or if they are, their intersectional components are not noted. In 2015, the FBI reported only 32 "multi-bias" incidents out of 5,850 total. This failure to report likely reflects a lack of awareness across several institutions about the contours of intersectional hate crimes and their effects, making it unlikely that victims of such violence can expect effective responses. Without narratives and data that draw attention to intersectional violence, it is unlikely that preventative efforts that do not center this vulnerability will be inclusive or effective.

As we mourn the life that was taken far too soon from Nabra Hassanen we must recognize that Nabra existed at the intersection of several targeted groups. She was a Muslim young woman, a daughter of immigrants, and a Nubian Egyptian. This means that while her death is a manifestation of Islamophobic violence, it’s also a part of the global culture of violence against women, and compounded violence against women of color. As Muslim American women and girls struggle with the tension between expression of religious identity and fear for their personal safety, we must demand that Islamophobic, racist and gendered violence be framed as an extension of state policy and rising societal hate. We must insist that intersectional hate crimes are not marginalized or overlooked in our movements, and challenge ourselves to fight harder to protect the women and girls of color in all of our communities.